Come on guys, let's do competition six as a short contest for a remake of a game before 1985, say. Four week deadline this time so nothing too complicated. I'm itching to get back into working on something with a deadline to push me.

I'm somewhat against the idea of "everyone can make up their own theme". The entries will just be too different for a fair comparison/voting. And the time restraint is imho not a warrant for having "reasonably similar looks", since some of us can afford to buy assets, others can afford to work 9h a day during the whole competition runtime, while others may have almost no time and no budget for gamedev with their family duties... Furthermore, imagine one would enter in his "most fun to play crap looking game" competition, another one in his "most professional looking crap game" competition - what criteria would count in the end for the voting? I think (and hereby write), that being absolutely transparent about how the voting works and which aspects count how much in the voting right from the beginning of the competition leads to the fairest competitions.

But while we're at coming up with ideas: If the CEO (Compo Executive Overlord) was to define "for the voting, everyone can give a total of 10 points for idea, 20 points for technical execution and 5 points for acoustic and 5 points for visual presentation", we could happily go with the "let every one create what ever they desire". Because we'd all know what counts in the end. Also, by adjusting the points for each category the same idea could be used for several compos.

The only issue I have with the 'create what you want' theme is people grabbing an almost complete game sitting on their hard drive and passing it off as 4-6 weeks of effort.

Having a theme/or selection of themes which are unknown until comp start date mitigates this and gives no-one an advantage.

I'm all for a consistent voting system and gameplay should be awarded the most points imo. Also, if the comp is for PC only anyone who has a Mac and is unable to play ALL games (via Wine or a Mac specific build) should be excluded from voting.

I do agree with most points too, so it just really needs someone to take this to a new competition thread and get it started.

Time limit: Not bothered - just kind of threw 4 weeks out there.

Type of game: Definitely agree that it should be themed which our CEO (Cannibalistic Evil Oppressor) should call this one so nobody can push through an already almost-complete project.

Voting: Again, it could be categorized but the general consensus until now has always been gut feeling best games in 1-2-3 order and a bit of feedback about what was great and not so great about what you experienced with each game.

BTW, I did some digging to find a suitable description for our overlords CEO title and opted for that one over several options. You all can pick whichever you think suits Qube best :-)

The devil is in the details, so what if we narrow it down to a certain type of gameplay considering the main game mechanics? Let's say a maze game. Create your own Pac-Man clone with your own theme and twist to the original gameplay. In this case the game has to be in a maze like environment with free up-down-left-right movement (top view). The "maze walls" could be anything...with similar purpose. Maybe also limit the resolution to around 320x240-ish?

Using the Pacman mechanics - dots/powerpills and chasing enemies and adding your own theme / twist sounds good to me. Simple voting is also best - I don't want to have to fill out a Derron esque spreadsheet come vote time